Quality Driven Enterprise

Quality is when the customer comes back, not the product. Quality affects the entire company, and the entire company must take responsibility for it.

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Opportunities

Quality as a Competitive Advantage

Quality is not an end in itself. Its objective, rather, is to exceed the customer’s expectation and thus become a competitive advantage. Every “touchpoint” is critical for the perception of a brand. Quality needs to be viewed more from the customer’s perspective. In a time of constant change, creating the right organizational and structural conditions is crucial to the company’s long-term and sustainable success. In this context, the “experience” of charging an electric vehicle can be just as important as shopping in a supermarket. New regulations and the increasing complexity associated with them, however, can make it challenging for many companies to put that insight into practice. At the same time, the traditional focus of quality work is expanded into areas such as cybersecurity and corporate governance.

As your partner, we support your quality organization in its necessary transformation and work with you to develop customized solutions. We don’t focus exclusively on processes and structures, but also strengthen your quality culture.

Solutions

Focus on Quality in Your Organization

Quality Transformation

What role will the quality organization play in your company in the future?

Supply crises, digitization and sustainability are examples of challenges that even quality organizations can’t avoid. On the contrary: the key is to define which role quality organizations can play in company-wide transformations in view of these challenges. Will they become drivers of high-quality software and data? How can sustainability aspects be given greater attention in product planning? The future viability of your quality organization depends on the answer to these questions.

We help you identify the challenges that are relevant to you and implement strategic objectives in your quality organization. Specifically, we help you:

• identify the transformation drivers in your quality organization to establish a long-term, shared understanding of quality that is geared to the future
• develop customer-specific strategies to empower the quality organization to master the transformation
• reinforce the strategy through end-to-end quality processes, KPI systems and a sustainable organizational and cultural orientation

Operational Quality Excellence

Quality comes at the end – right?

“Quality has to be generated where the value creation takes place.” It sounds self-evident, but this truism is often only partly taken into account in the process design. Basic principles like “the later the error is discovered, the higher the cost” have lost none of their currency even in this age of digital transformation. With our Q6 method, which is based on six basic principles, we help companies improve their operational quality processes.

Depending on the specific challenges, we help you with the following topics:

• analysis of the existing quality system based on a 360-degree quality check
• optimization of quality processes in the operational area using our proven Q6 method
• supporting change processes and creating a changed role image of the quality organization through change and communication management

Cybersecurity Management

How can I ruin my good reputation in a matter of minutes?

As companies and products become more digital, their vulnerability to potential cyber-attacks also rises. Yet the risk of an attack, often lasting just minutes but capable of ruining a hard-earned good reputation, is often underestimated. So cybersecurity is a relevant competitive advantage that needs to be protected. Efficient prevention in product development, rapid detection of and defense against attacks, and the ability to restore relevant systems, are of critical importance.

We help you upgrade and optimize your cybersecurity and your software-update management systems. This includes:

• developing risk-based cybersecurity governance covering all relevant interfaces
• establishing, upgrading and optimizing the cybersecurity and software-update management systems from prevention to recovery
• heightening awareness of cybersecurity in the company through training and communication measures as well as simulations in collaboration with partners

Corporate Governance

Never heard of it?

Few people have much of an idea what corporate governance is all about. Yet this is a crucial consideration which, as an ESG (environmental, social, governance) criterion, can have a major impact on a company’s market valuation. Responsible corporate governance requires the establishment of a framework to ensure proper guidance and monitoring of the company in question. The most important factors are a (product-)compliance and risk management system as a line of defense and comprehensive separation of duties.

We help you set up and refine your corporate governance apparatus, including:

• developing corporate governance guidelines and the framework for implementation in the company
• risk analysis as well as setup and implementation of customer-specific (product-)compliance and risk management systems
• firmly rooting corporate governance in the organization and processes across all protective and control mechanisms

Data-Driven Quality

Data is the new gold – digging yet?

The quality management of the future is strongly linked with the consistent and, above all, useful application and interpretation of data. This has enormous potential, as only a fraction of the opportunities offered by data has been exploited to date. The use of digital field data for predictive anticipation of potential problems, digital twins and the use of error monitoring systems in manufacturing with the objective of self-optimization are just a few examples.

We work with you to design the quality concept of the future with a view to sustainable quality improvement and cost-effectiveness through:

• evaluation of current digital initiatives and the definition of an overarching digitization strategy
• development, evaluation and implementation of concrete use cases based on our extensive use-case database
• analysis of existing data together with our data-analytics team, e.g. to improve forecasting of warranty and goodwill costs through predictive data analysis